Ce livre est un pamphlet écrit au siècle dernier par un professeur de littérature américain, dans lequel l'Orientalisme est dénoncé comme une imposture pernicieuse qui véhiculerait depuis deux siècles une fausse image négative et raciste des habitants de l'Orient, qui masquerait un dessein caché de domination et d'asservissement, et aurait conduit, du fait de son vain prestige de prétendue science, hier les gouvernements d'Europe au colonialisme et aujourd'hui celui des États-Unis à une politique injuste. Cette prétendue science, au lieu de se baser sur l'observation, la rigueur, la probité, les faits, serait en fait la répétition éternelle et stérile de poncifs aussi odieux qu'imaginaires, créés de toute pièce par la malveillance de ses fondateurs.

Sitôt couchés par écrits, les thèses de ces hommes malfaisants acquirent un pourvoir extraordinaire : ceux qui ingénument les lisaient étaient soudain sous l'empire d'un maléfice. Devenus totalement incapable de juger par eux même, ils ne faisaient plus que répéter ce qu'ils avaient lu, et leurs opinions prenaient bientôt la force de dogmes. Ainsi, même lorsqu'ils partaient voyager en Orient, ce que leurs yeux et leurs oreilles auraient du leur enseigner pour les détromper ne parvenaient plus à leur entendement ensorcelé : ils ne vivaient qu'a travers un prisme déformant qui ne faisait que confirmer leurs erreurs, comme si un éclat du miroir de la reine des neige s'était logé dans leur œil et avait refroidi leur cœur et leur intelligence. C'est pour délivrer le monde gémissant sous l'emprise de ces opinions infâmes que l'auteur se propose de les confondre en mettant sous nos yeux les écrits coupables, xénophobes, condescendants et essentialistes des savants, géographes, écrivains, agent secrets et politiciens occidentaux. Ainsi, ayant brisé la pierre de rosette et les tablettes cunéiformes, brulé les rouleaux de papyrus, les dictionnaires et les grammaires, chassé les docteurs et les étudiants des universités, et s'étant désaltéré dans l'onde purifiante du Léthé, les hommes détrompés de leurs erreurs pourront enfin se jeter dans les bras les uns des autres, unis par l'amitié et la concorde, rendus enfin capables de comprendre l'autre dans sa différence et sa singularité.

Mais avant d'entamer la danse de Saint Guy à ces airs de pipeau et de fifrelin, examinons par acquis de conscience l'âme noire de celui qui le premier - selon lui, car en réalité, il y en a eu un nombre incroyable - a eu l'idée de s'intéresser à l'Orient contemporain, celui qui a précédé l'expédition de Napoléon en Égypte, Constantin de Volney. Or bizarrement, loin de voir dans les orientaux un type unique, Volney nous brosse au contraire le portrait d'une foule de peuples aux mœurs et croyances diverses, là où Said parle uniquement d'Oriental, d'arabe et de musulman comme si ces termes étaient de toute évidence synonymes. De même, loin de considérer comme supérieur moralement ceux qui sont riches et puissants, c'est chez les plus pauvres des nomades bédouins du désert auprès desquels il vit que Volney trouve le plus de sagesse et d'humanité. Loin d'avoir le cœur sec, il ne cesse de gémir contre les désastres de la pauvreté et des malheurs qui frappent la population, et cherche la cause dans le régime politique, les mœurs, l'éducation, et non pas la race ou le climat : il a les mots les plus durs contre la théorie des climats de Montesquieu. Enfin, loin de méditer une invasion après avoir constaté la faiblesse de l'armée ottomane, il exhorte ses compatriotes par les arguments les plus forts à ne pas tenter d'aventure militaire qui ne serait souhaitable pour personne. Au contraire, de retour en France, il devient député du tiers état des états généraux, et s'engage résolument et activement pour une révolution qui proclame les droits universels de l'être humain. A aucun moment Volney ne profère la moindre idée raciste ou impérialiste, bien au contraire. Mais où est donc le croque-mitaine ? Pourquoi l'auteur brosse-t-il du premier des orientalistes un portrait si contraire à la réalité? Quelles sont ses motivations ?

A mon avis, le grand péché originel de Volney est de décrire un Orient qui ne correspond pas à ce que Said voudrait qu'il soit. Au lieu de décrire un lieu idyllique où règnent la justice, la prospérité et la tolérance, protégeant les pauvres et les minorités, chacun vivant en bonne intelligence, il brosse plutôt le portait hideux et triste des ravages du despotisme, de l'ignorance et de la rapine sous le gouvernements non pas des Européens, mais des Turcs, et où la religion est un instrument de domination au mains d'hommes injustes. Comme c'est insupportable, il ne faut pas que cela soit. Et pour cela, Said le répète ad nauseam, l'Orient réel n'existe pas, il ne peut être qu'imaginaire, et issu de la malice de personnes mal intentionnées. Il ne peut pas y avoir un empire Ottoman critiquable, car seuls les orientalistes occidentaux peuvent être impérialistes, mauvais, coupables, exploiteurs et responsables des malheurs du monde. Il faut donc, selon lui, détruire toute possibilité d'étude, l'ensevelir sous un tombereau d'opprobre, afin que pétrifié par une terreur quasi-mystique, personne n'ose plus étudier l'Orient ancien d'avant la colonisation. Car étudier, c'est prendre le risque de parfois porter des jugements négatifs sur ce que l'on découvre. Et communiquer ces découvertes, c'est servir un carburant potentiel à l'erreur du racisme, et à l'injustice du colonialisme. Mais l'auteur va plus loin puisqu'il fait de l'étude de l'Orient non pas simplement la belle couleur dont se sert hypocritement l'injustice pour déguiser ses méfaits, ou l'instrument qu'elle utilise perfidement pour parvenir à ses fins, il en fait carrément le moteur et l'âme pensante d'un dessein maléfique. Il faut donc pour lui stopper l'étude, ou la faire plutôt par une méthode plus correcte, c'est à dire en partant du résultat souhaité qui doit être une admiration sans bornes ni réserves.

La démonstration est aisée et très convaincante. Elle consiste à projeter une accumulation d'éléments soigneusement choisis sur un spectre très simple : dès qu'il y a une injustice commise ou une erreur affirmée, le persécuteur ou menteur est nécessairement un savant orientaliste occidental, et l'oriental est forcément la pauvre victime innocente. Il est facile de choisir parmi la foule des personnages réactionnaires et bornés, demi-savants, falots qui ont hanté l'Orient dans des voyages oiseux au XIXème siècle pour trouver dans leurs écrits des poncifs éculés. Un peu d'ironie facile permet toujours de leur donner une teinte franchement malveillante et odieuse. Flaubert est un bon candidat pour cet exercice. C'est peut-être un écrivain avec des qualités, mais certainement pas celles de quelqu'un d'ouvert et de compréhensif. Quasiment trainé de force dans ce voyage par un ami, il ne fait que s'y ennuyer, dauber sur les gens, et courir les bordels. Or le fait est qu'il se comporte exactement de la même façon chez lui. Mais ça, Said ne le dit pas : il en fait plutôt un symbole typique de l'orientaliste vicieux et lubrique qui vient chercher ailleurs le frisson prétendument interdit chez lui et trouver la confirmation de sa supériorité. En réalité, Flaubert se sent tout autant supérieur au pauvre oriental, qu'au bourgeois croisé dans une étape ou à Paris, qu'au prolétaire français qui lutte pour la justice : c'est son instruction qui lui fait sentir directement sa supériorité sur l'ignorant, et non pas sa race ou ce qu'il a pu lire dans les orientalistes comme le suggère Said. L'auteur n'a de toute façon aucune espèce de compassion pour les prolétaires occidentaux, ce n'est pour lui dans l'ensemble qu'une vile canaille que l'Europe envoie pour peupler ses colonies et sur les malheurs desquels il ne verserait pas une larme. De toute façon, ni Flaubert, ni Lamartine, ni Nerval, ni Chateaubriand ne sont des hommes de sciences, ce sont des littérateurs privilégiés qui jouissent du loisir et de leur fortune pour écrire des mémoires personnelles sans intérêt ni prétention scientifique orientaliste. Fonder une démonstration sur leurs états d'âme est une plaisanterie, mais voilà ce qui arrive quand la littérature prend le pas sur l'histoire.

Enfin, que des agents des gouvernements instruits des choses de l'Orient aient pu être les instruments du colonialisme, c'est évident. Il est clair que l'étude de l'Orient est un expédient utile et un prétexte commode. Mais comment peut-il en être la cause et l'origine ? Comment le but de l'étude ne peut être nécessairement que la domination ? Pourquoi ne pas indiquer qu'il y eut pour soutenir le projet colonial besoin d'une propagande forte? Que beaucoup se sont élevés contre cette direction prise? Comment ne pas parler des luttes révolutionnaires qui agitent l'Europe du XIXème ? C'est laisser entendre bien trop clairement que ce projet a été unanimement soutenu depuis toujours par les savants occidentaux obsédé par la peur de l'Orient et la volonté frénétique de le détruire. Il remonte jusqu'aux grecs, qui pour le besoin de la cause, sont mis avec l'Occident, au mépris de la géographie et du plus élémentaire sens commun!

Ainsi, lorsqu'au bout de cinq cent pages d'exposition de turpitudes et d'extravagances bien choisies et rendues bien odieuses, presque sans aucune nuance ni contrepoids, on en vient à croire, pour peu qu'on fasse confiance à l'auteur qui en impose par ses titres universitaires et son apparente modestie, que la démonstration est faite: la science est à retirer des mains des orientalistes, car elle ne peut leur être utile à rien d'autre qu'à corrompre leur sens moral. A mon avis, la preuve est plutôt faite que s'il est un prétendu orientalisme qui est réducteur, essentialiste, partiel, aveugle et biaisé, l'auteur en est le véritable chef de file. Il cherche la paille dans l'œil du voisin sans voir la poutre dans le sien: on aurait préféré qu'il ne se livre pas aux mêmes erreurs qu'il dénonce pour accueillir son ouvrage avec une meilleure estime. On reste abasourdi après avoir l'avoir vu attaquer tel un sycophante sur un angle particulièrement simpliste une question complexe, souhaiter benoîtement avoir contribué à la paix et la compréhension entre les peuples. C'est plutôt abonder dans la thèse du choc des civilisations, attiser le ressentiment des anciens pays coloniaux, galvaniser la colère suscitée par les frustrations.

Dans la postface, écrite longtemps après la première édition, l'auteur prend heureusement des distances avec son écrit, et explique que les fondamentalistes, qui s'inspirent depuis de son livre pour rejeter en bloc l'occident, l'auraient mal compris. C'est bien plaisant! Je crois plutôt qu'ils l'ont fort bien compris, et que Said, finalement gêné de voir les beaux fruits de son travail, se réfugie dans la déni. Détruire la science est une folie, c'est en elle et non dans nos préjugés qu'il faut réguler nos opinions, nos mœurs et notre conduite. C'est bien l'ignorance qui est, avec l'envie, la source de nos maux. Il faut bien au contraire corriger les erreurs en les identifiant, et non bâtir des échafaudages branlants de procès d'intentions et d'erreurs, pour rendre le savoir dans son ensemble odieux et suspect. En somme, un livre franchement irritant par son ignorance et sa malveillance.

Most of it's statements are probably true to reality given the fact that there are so many realities. But where is the analysis

Had been reading this book for MONTHS and finally finished. It’s definitely a fundamental and pioneering text in the field that advanced many original critiques especially for the time, but nonetheless a dense, repetitive, and laborious read.

Btw, I actually really enjoyed reading the Afterword — it gave a much clearer and more succinct breakdown of Said’s major themes and ideas…

“…as a system of thought Orientalism approaches a heterogenous, dynamic, and complex human reality from an uncritically essentialist standpoint: this suggests both an enduring Oriental reality and an opposing, but no less enduring Western essence, which observes the Orient from afar, and from, so to speak, above. This false position hides historical change. Even more important, from my standpoint, it hides the interests of the Orientalist. Those, despite attempts to draw subtle distinctions between orientalism as an innocent scholarly endeavor and Orientalism as an accomplice to Empire, can never unilaterally be detached from the general imperial context that begins its modern global phase with Napoleon‘s invasion of Egypt in 1798.”

I'd heard a lot about Said's influential critique through academic hearsay, but was excited to finally drink straight from the source, as it were. Unfortunately, I found Orientalism both less nuanced and less original than I was expecting. The most compelling of Said's arguments (in the eyes of this relatively ignorant reader, at least) largely echo earlier – albeit lesser known – theorists like Anouar Abdel-Malek. Meanwhile, Said's approach suffers from a number of notable defects, including:

(a) unclear scope (without ever providing a direct definition of his terms, Said seems to distinguish Orientalism, as an academic-political phenomenon, from Romantic visions of the Orient, writing that "for artists like Nerval and Segalen the word 'Orient' was wonderfully, ingeniously connected to exoticism, glamour, mystery, and promise");

(b) perplexing apologetics (of Nerval's 'laison' [!] with an Egyptian slave girl, Said writes that the French author "invests himself in the Orient, producing not so much a novelistic narrative as an everlasting intention—never fully realized—to fuse mind with physical action" – something which amounts, in Said's view, to "a swerving away from discursive finality of the sort envisioned by previous writings of the Orient");

(c) lack of close readings (with one or two exceptions, Said's go-to method is to paraphrase an author's work absent direct quotations and in accordance with the pre-established thesis of the book – hence, "even in Burton's prose we are never directly given the Orient; everything about it is presented to us by way of Burton's knowledgeable (and often prurient) interventions, which remind us repeatedly how he had taken over management of Oriental life for the purposes of his narrative");

(d) possible cherry-picking (as others have noted, Said largely ignores the instances of Orientalism that could challenge or otherwise refine his thesis, such as Orientalism by non-colonial powers or so-called "self-Orientalism"); and

(e) excessive repetition and wordiness (one reviewer has aptly described Said's prose style as "why use one word when ten will do?"), which makes it all the more frustrating when he declines to address certain key topics, such as German Orientalism, for lack of space.

To build upon this last point, Said wraps up Orientalism with a list of questions that he has "attempted to raise" in his book:

How does one represent other cultures? What is another culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self congratulation (when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the "other")? Do cultural, religious, and racial differences matter more than socio-economic categories, or politicalhistorical ones? How do ideas acquire authority, 'normality,' and even the status of 'natural' truth? What is the role of the intellectual? Is he there to validate the culture and state of which he is a part? What importance must he give to an independent critical consciousness, an oppositional critical consciousness?

I wish that Said had devoted more time to discussing and theorizing about these questions rather than, say, getting hung-up on the details of Ernest Renan's October 1857 minute for the Journal des débats. Although, to be fair, Said would later describe Orientalism as "a partisan book, not a theoretical machine".

There's a curious double-standard between what we expect from White guy authors compared to authors of any other background. When an author is a Native American, for example, we tend to expect their books to deliver to us the 'Native American experience'. If the author is a woman, we tend to expect that her book will show us the 'female perspective'--to the degree that female authors who write stories about men are forced to take on a masculine or nondescript name, like J.K. Rowling.

So we get Western-educated authors like Achebe, Hosseini, and Momaday who write thoroughly traditional novels in the Western style and then place a thin veneer of their own ethnic background onto those stories, and are praised for it in academia, because their work meets expectation: delivering to The West a simplified and 'pre-colonized' version of foreignness.

As a White male author, on the other hand, the expectation is that you won't stick to your own cultural identity, but will instead attempt to explore the breadth and depth of human experience through characters of many backgrounds--and why not? White guys have been doing it for centuries, and we love them for it.

In fact, the problem here is not that White guys are encouraged to take on other roles, its that non-White, non-male folks are discouraged from doing so. As Said points out: it is not only Black people who are capable of writing about Black people, or only Arabs about Arabs, or only Whites about Whites; we all need to explore similarities and differences in our fellow humans.

So here I am: White guy, trying to explore humanity, writing a bit of fiction about Colonialism, about the English rule in Egypt and India, featuring characters of different backgrounds--but it's daunting. I don't want to do it thoughtlessly, and though I take a great deal of inspiration from Haggard, Kipling, Conrad, and Burton, I don't want to incidentally adopt their shortcomings along with the interesting bits.

So I thought I might combat their prejudices by taking in the most notable and talked-about book on interactions and stereotypes between The West and The East. However, Orientalism was not what I expected; but then again, it wasn't what Said expected, either. He didn't intend to write 'The Book' on East/West interaction, his work is much narrower in scope.

The whole of the book is Said looking closely at a dozen authors, mostly French and English, some academics, some fiction writers, and giving examples of a number of quotes for each where they talk about 'The East' in ways that demonstrate a certain bias. That's pretty much it, all four-hundred pages. Why spend that long on such a specific topic? Because this book was meant for a small academic publication, and that's what specialized academics do.

Now, if you've read any of the other reviews of this book on GR, you'd get the impression that Said is an enraged polemicist who spends the whole book denigrating 'The West' and praising 'The East'. It’s inexplicable to me that any person with the most basic reading comprehension could come away from Said with this view. Indeed, once I realized the scope of this work (and that it wasn't likely to help with my specific writing concern), I almost abandoned it, but I wanted to get to the 'angry Said' part where he defames Western civilization, just to see how bad it got.

It never came. Said's tone throughout the book is exceedingly dry and cautious--too much so, for my taste, I've been known to enjoy a good diatribe--so any prejudicial anger a reader might find in this book is only what they brought in with them. The notion that Said is anti-Western or Pro-Islam is such a bizarrely inexplicable misreading that the only reason a reader could come away from the book with that belief is if they brought in a huge set of prejudices and then ignored everything Said actually wrote.

First, they must assume that ‘East’ and ‘West’ are terms that have well-defined geographical and social meanings, and then ignore the fact that Said repeatedly states that, to him, 'East' and 'West' are just convenient ideas, not real, solid entities--that it is ridiculous to talk about India, China, and the Middle East as if they were one culture, or even to lump in the various Arab states with one another, when they each have very different histories and values. There is no more unity between all Islamic nations than there is between all Christian nations.

Trying to place a line between Greece and Turkey and claiming these are separate cultures is artificial. Lest we forget: Troy was in Turkey, when the Roman Empire died in Italy it continued in Istanbul (as Edith Hamilton points out: Roman rule was always more Persian than Greek), Southern Europe was long ruled by Moors, and as Ockley’s 1798 History of the Saracens contentiously point out, nearly everything Europe knows of Greek philosophy and mathematics came from Islam.

Then, the ignorant reader would have to assume that when Said points out a specific trend in some authors of the ‘West’, that this constitutes an attack on ‘The West’ as an entity (which Said denies exists). This despite the fact that Said explicitly holds many of these Western authors in high regard and specifically states that there’s nothing wrong with cultures having interdependent relationships:
n  

“The Arab world today is an intellectual, political, and cultural satellite of the United States. This is not in and of itself something to be lamented; the specific form of the satellite relationship, however, is.”

n
The reader would then have to assume that this perceived attack on a fictional ‘Western Culture’ was the same thing as an uplifting of ‘the East’, even though Said often speaks about how many Eastern states are damaged and without a modern intellectual tradition to train its members to do the work of improving them, and that all the great centers of study and economic control for Islam are located in England or America.

But then, the fact that there are prejudiced readers is hardly surprising: the world is full of people trying to divide everything up between 'us' and 'them'. I get comments from people who don't realize that Islam is an Abrahamic religion--sharing the same holy books, prophets, and god as Christianity and Judaism--people who aren't aware that a 'fatwa' just means any public statement by a scholar. You read about American military consultants in the Middle East who don't know the difference between Shia and Sunni. Very few these days would connect this quote:
n  

"The ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr"

n
with Mohammed.

How easily we forget that Athens is closer to Marrakesh, Tunis, Cairo, and Baghdad than it is to Paris, Berlin, or London.

I remember seeing a supposedly humorous map where the Middle East was replaced by an impact crater, with the words 'Problem Solved' beneath it, completely ignoring the fact that the reason there is constant conflict there is because powerful First World countries have gone in, supplied both sides with cheap guns, made Opium the only profitable crop for farmers to grow, and set up regimes whose sole purpose is to funnel money and natural resources out of those countries and into multinational banks--any region is going to be politically unstable under those conditions.

Indeed, Said openly admits that there is much wrong in the Arab world, that it is full of turmoil and violence and lack of education, and that it is all too easy to paint it as a ‘fallen culture’ when compared to the heights of sophistication and science it once enjoyed, which sparked off the Renaissance in Europe. Of course, the way Arabs are commonly typified as backward is the same way people typify ant outgroup: the cliches of American rednecks and hippy-dippy liberals are the same as the cliche Arab: ignorant, sectarian, ever-feuding, following charismatic leaders into reactionary movements. We can point to Religious Fundamentalists, Tea Party Yokels, Ron Paul Libertarians, Militant Feminists, and Black Muslim Brotherhood members and find the same clannish human system at play.

I was constantly struck by the fact that the separation Said depicts between the ideas of East and West were not specific to that cultural conflict, but were the same generic type of power separation laid out by Marx: a dominating power structure versus the population whom they control and profit from. They operate off of the same self-serving justifications for their rule: that the population is childlike and irrational, easily manipulated, and in need of governance. Very little of Said’s analysis was specific to the conflict between the East and West--which may have been deliberate on his part--but I think it would have made his neutral stance clearer if he had expressed outright that he was making a generalized argument about all power dynamics. Extending the narrow focus of his argument and showing that this is how power works everywhere, at all times, would have made his work stronger, overall.

As I read, it seemed that what Said was saying was clearly true, but not in a revelatory way. I found myself comparing it to Angela Carter’s n  The Sadeian Womann, my high-water mark for social criticism, where her statements are inescapably true, but in a way you never realized until you saw it written out. I kept waiting for Said to take it to the next level, to elevate these basic, naked observations to some profound and insightful conclusion.

Of course European, Christian powers would mythologize and simplify Islam, of course they would make a phantom enemy of it, while at the same time trading, allying, and sharing sources of inspiration with it--that is no more than differing cultures have always done, as Said points out. What great insight into this system is meant to shock me? Am I simply too much the postmodern, atheistic American to see what he says as anything but basic and inescapable?

I came to this book looking to find something insidious, some system by which these cultures interact uniquely, but what I got was ‘most people are ignorant, dominating forces produce propaganda, Europe vs. Islam edition’. Of course we are all Quixote and Pangloss: making ourselves heroes of a fantastical narrative and creating enemies to blame because we are too weak to do anything other than maintain that flattering fiction. But, even if we are all human, and all power structures operate in the same ways, there should still be some specifics which set this incidence apart.

I was waiting for Said to do some serious unpacking. It’s not enough to show a passage of Renan’s and demonstrate that his Semites are ‘sterile’--I want to know how that construction is achieved, why it is important, how it operates culturally and psychologically, how it offers an important and vital insight into the grander cultural interaction. And yet, just as he seems to be reaching a kind of specificity, he breaks off:
n  

“Why the Orient seems still to suggest not only fecundity but sexual promise (and threat) . . . is something on which one could speculate: it is not the province of my analysis here, alas, despite its frequently noted appearance.”

n
So then, if not that, what is the province of his analysis? It isn’t until his conclusion that he lays out his purpose and helps us to understand why he never extends to these sorts of specific conclusions, which made me wish that he had made his conclusion his introduction, so I wouldn’t have spent four-hundred pages wondering why he keeps stopping just when it was starting to get interesting.

This is an academic work with a very narrow scope. It is meant to give a view of a very specific trend in Orientalist criticism amongst a group of authors, and not to force on the reader any specific conclusion about what this trend means, or how it operates on a minute level, except to point out that it does in fact exist, and that it represents familiar power dynamics. That is the purpose and the effect of this book, and it invites the reader to use it to extend these examples into specific arguments and observations of their own, to use the general roadmap provided as a guide for their own work. The fact that it has become the central text on the subject is an accident of time and place, for that was not the author’s purpose, nor is this a transformative, revelatory work that sets out a specific theory of analysis for looking at Orientalist works--as I wish it had been.

In the end, Said’s Orientalism is not a primer, but an experiment which is incomplete without further scholarship on the part of the reader. Since Said is not specific, we cannot know just how accurate his analysis is unless we can compare it to our own readings of the same works, so it can only be a companion to our studies and not a work which, on its own, develops a unique view which we can use, as scholars, going forward.

انه الكتاب العربي الوحيد في قائمه مائه كتاب غيروا تاريخ العالم للنابغه ادوارد سعيد
امتاع ابداع
لن تعتبر قارىء ومثقف بدون ذلك الكتاب
من وجهه نظرى
سرد
بساطه مفاهيم سلسه انيقه
تم ترجمته الي عده لغات

The book demonstrates how Foucault’s discourse theory can be applied to colonial themes. You can’t unread it. Of course, the Islamic world, and the so-called East in general, may have its own rigid discourse about the so-called West. For literary or social theory, the book is also remarkably well-written.

Preface (2003)
Acknowledgments
Introduction

--Orientalism

Afterword (1995)
Notes
Index

read for a paper i’m writing.

have encountered many excerpts and ideas from this book in the last few years, but this was my first time reading it in full. a lot of Said’s arguments have, since 1978, become a fundamental part of academic discourses about how “the West” represents “the East.”

and yet, reading the “Orientalism Now” section of this book, i was acutely aware of its relevance to the current moment, not just the moment in which it was written. i did a lot of thinking about how Orientalist imaginations of “the East” have persisted in modern academic and popular culture.

this book was effective as both theory/criticism and as a really comprehensive history of British, French, and US Orientalism — as an assertion of cultural power, as an instrument of empire and conquest, as a political and economic tool into the present. it was so useful to see, side by side, the evolution of Orientalism as an intellectual discipline in the West alongside the evolution of how this discipline was being used to assert Western dominance elsewhere.

there’s not really anything i can say about Said’s work that it can’t say for itself, so i don’t feel inclined to write a longer review than this one. very glad i read this though.

(ps i read a 1979 edition that my dad bought used (and annotated heavily) for his undergrad thesis, so my copy of this book has been on some adventures in the past 45 years. which is kind of neat)

Said era de origem palestina e foi professor de Literatura na Columbia University. Este livro foi escrito ha mais de 40 anos, mas continua muito atual e é uma leitura essencial para entender o Orientalismo (a visao ocidental do Oriente que nada tem a ver com o Oriente real), a apropriaçao cultural e o desrespeito com o lugar de fala do outro.

Nao podem representar a si mesmos: devem ser representados. (Karl Marx)

  
Jade e Latifa ai, ai...

Este conflito oriente x ocidente se vê nos livros religiosos, na historia, na literatura, desde a Antiguidade Classica até os dias atuais.
Faz uma significativa contribuiçao a construçáo do discurso orientalista, obras de Goethe, Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Kinglake, Nerval, Flaubert, Lane, Burton, Scotl, Byron, Vigny, Disraeli, George Eliot, Gautier e outros.
Enquanto lia, lembrei imediatamente de Habibi, a coisa mais orientalista, misogina e racista que ja li na minha vida, mas é bem avaliado por todos aqui no Goodreads. Esta HQ apresenta varios clichês que Said mencionou no livro:

O próprio orientalismo, além do mais, foi uma província exclusivamente masculina; do mesmo modo que muitas corporacões profissionais durante o período moderno. Ele via a si mesmo ao seu tema de estudos com antolhos sexistas. Isso é especialmente evidente nos escritos de viajantes e romancistas: as mulheres costumam ser criaturas de uma fantasia masculina de poder. Elas exprimem uma sensualidade ilimitada, sao mais ou menos estúpidas e, acima de tudo, desejosas, o orientalista ve-se como aquele que realiza a uniáo entre o Oriente e o Ocidente, mediante, principalmente, uma reafirmaçáo da supremacía tecnológica, política e cultural do Oeste.

Nos filmes e na televisáo o árabe é associado à libidinagem ou à desonestidade sedenta de sangue. Aparece como um degenerado super-sexuado, capaz, é claro, de intrigas astutamente tortuosas, mas essencialmente sádico, traiçoeiro, baixo.

O oriental é irracional, depravado (caído), infantil, "diferente"; desse modo, o europeu é racional, virtuoso, maduro, "normal".

Lewis sugere que o árabe é pouca coisa mais que um ser sexual neurótico.

Eu estou impactada e ficarei assim por muito tempo. Recomendo a todo mundo que reconhece a importância da representatividade.

In spots, Edward Said's Orientalism has its longeurs; but it does make a point, that there is little understanding in the West of other cultures. That is particularly true of where Islam is concerned. Most Arabist scholars in the West have been propaganda whores for their governments -- particularly in the U.S.

I particularly liked Said's discussions of authors of fiction, but these were few and far between. Most of his Bêtes-Noires are writers with whose work I am unfamiliar. He does a well-deserved hatchet job on Bernard Lewis, however.

I am here reviewing two books, each of which has made a little splash in its own way. Of the two, Edward Said's Orientalism has had more time to develop a following in the academic community than Colin Woodard's much more recent American Nations. However, Said's work is both less entertaining and far more frustrating in that it posits what amounts to a banal observation via ponderous exposition. Said says nothing much at great length in complaining that academia, infected by colonialist thought since at least the eighteenth and especially nineteenth centuries, filters the East through a biased lens that portrays its folk, lit, and folkways as exotic, barbaric, libertine, inferior, and essentially in contrast to the West. Specifically, he claims that western tradition describes "[t]he Oriental [as] irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, 'different;' thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, 'normal.'" (page 40) He finds this to be a sad state of affairs.

Well, yes. News of the existence of latent and structural nativist prejudice should come as no surprise to anyone. But the world is round; a point of reference is essential when discussing a sphere. Who (or what) exactly is East and who (or what) does Said define as the West?

To be clear, the Orient and Occident of which he writes are divided between 'Others' ranging from north Africa to Japan, but excluding Europeans and the far flung former constituents of Greater Britain such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. His primary focus is on Arabs (arguably former Ottomans); oddly enough, he has nothing to say about Sub-Saharan, central, and East African peoples; no Spanish (or any) depictions of indigeneous Central and South Americans; precious little regarding Mughals, Indians (Rudyard Kipling getting the heave-ho here), or possibly the Turkic and Mongolian peoples of central Asia (although a quick look at the Baburnama might have been instructive in support or opposition to his thesis); jack all of the Chinese, Koreans, or Japanese, nor epistles or poems of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, or the entire southeast Asian peninsula (with apologies to fans of James Michener, Thor Heyerdahl, Colleen McCullough, and other Occidentals filling out that canon).

Still and notwithstanding Said's desire to limit the scope of his investigation, he's initially all over the map. "But one big division, as between West and Orient," he writes on pp. 57-58,

leads to other smaller ones, especially as the normal enterprises of civilization provoke such outgoing activities as travel, conquest, new experiences. In classical Greece and Rome geographers, historians, public figures like Caesar, orators, and poets added to the fund of taxonomic lore separating races, regions, nations, and minds from each other.… From at least the second century B.C. on, it was lost on no traveler… that Herodotus… and Alexander… had been in the Orient before. The Orient was therefore subdivided into realms previously known, visited, conquered, by Herodotus and Alexander… Christianity completed the setting up of main intra-Oriental spheres: there was a Near Orient and a Far Orient, a familiar Orient, which Rene Grousset calls "l'empire du Levant," and a novel Orient. The Orient therefore alternated in the mind's geography between being an Old World to which one returned, as to Eden or Paradise, there to set up a new version of the old, and being a wholly new place to which one came as Columbus came to America…. Certainly neither of these Orients was purely one thing or the other: it is their vacillations, their tempting suggestiveness, their capacity for entertaining and confusing the mind, that are interesting…. These are the lenses through which the Orient is experienced, and they shape the language, perception, and form of the encounter between East and West. What gives the immense number of encounters some unity, however, is the vacillation I was speaking about earlier. Something patently foreign and distant acquires, for one reason or another, a status more rather than less familiar….

In other words, what group A writes about group B may well vary from author to author, being inherently limited in scope to what has been encountered personally or as mediated by others (those being all the options) and therefore subject to change. Yet what all accounts retain in common is the defining label "Oriental," which over time begets a familiar, if meaningless, stereotype for readers.

Said goes on to describe this on pages 59-60 as an unremarkable and natural occurrence, even if persistently negative encounters lead to an inherently negative portrayal:

[W]here Islam was concerned, European fear, if not always respect, was in order…. What Christians typically felt about the Eastern armies was that... "they devastated everything..." For Europe, Islam was a lasting trauma…. Like Walter Scott's Saracens, the European representation of the Muslim, Ottoman, or Arab was always a way of controlling the redoubtable Orient, and to a certain extent the same is true of the methods of contemporary learned Orientalists…. There is nothing especially controversial or reprehensible about such domestications of the exotic; they take place between all cultures, certainly, and between all men. My point, however, is to emphasize the truth that the Orientalist… performed this kind of mental operation. But what is more important still is the limited vocabulary and imagery that impose themselves as a consequence.

Said, who in over 50 pages of preface, introduction, and afterword wrings his hands over the questionable impact and relevance of his argument, ultimately peters out more than he concludes. At page 325, he apologizes, "My project has been to describe a particular system of ideas, not by any means to displace the system with a new one…. How does one represent other cultures? What is another culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self-congratulation (when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the 'other')?... No one can escape dealing with, if not the East/West division, then the North/South one, the have/have-not one, the imperialist/anti-imperialist one, the white/colored one…"

Speaking of which, what can we find lurking within the psyche of the good ol' U.S. of A? Assuming the natural existence of illusory, corrupt, and arbitrary splits running the gamut of (Western) scholarship and lay literature, let us turn to their intersection in the nonfiction of a freelance journalist. What does the author of American Nations express?

For Colin Woodard, all American internal policy conflict devolves from ideologies borne of the eleven "national" personalities, mapped thus:



[And here's the B&W version from the book that's a bit easier to read.]

Discounting the Inuit population of First Nation (because the author does), here are the nations' chief alignments and characteristics as one might roll them off a twenty-sided die:
New France - consensus-driven, socialist, multicultural, and independent. The DM (or GM, if you prefer)
Yankeedom - "public Protestants," people who value the perfection of the collective good over that of the individual and see government and advanced education as the primary means to its attainment. Lawful Good.
The Left Coast - the progeny of Yankeedom and Greater Appalachia's Borderlanders, they are now utopian lovers of self-expression and exploration, environmentalist. Neutral Good.
Greater Appalachia - independent, irascible, intolerant, God-fearing nationalists suspicious of elitism in any combination of wealth, privilege, education, or social engineering by public works. Chaotic Good.
The Midlands - middle-class pluralists resistant to major status quo changes, instinctively skeptical of passionate pols. Lawful Neutral.
El Norte - independent, self-sufficient, and working class Hispanics. Also Lawful Neutral.
New Netherlands - multicultural, laissez-faire, and materialistic. True Neutral.
The Far West - excluding Mormons, these are resentful, industrial-welfare dependent libertarians whose allegiance swings toward whichever of their two principal benefactors (major corporations and the federal government) appears to be investing the most in local infrastructure. Chaotic Neutral.
Tidewater - gentry built on respect for authority and tradition, albeit eroded by Appalachian and Midlander intrusions. Formerly Lawful Evil, and moving toward Lawful Neutral.
The Deep South - "private Protestants," people who value privilege, oligarchy, and wealth incumbency, and otherwise exist to thwart the egalitarian-leaning intrusions of Yankeedom. Except for the black people living there, who are essentially disenfranchised. Neutral Evil.

So far, so fascinating. Woodard built his map historically, by colonization, immigration, and the wanderings of the Wells Fargo wagon. By contrast, here's a look at the 2016 popular vote map:
, or, for those who prefer a bit more purple:

Oh, and 2012:


You make the call. In drawing his tribal map, Woodard dispenses with racial, religious, and class distinctions. He asks that we overlook the disparate impact that geography, climate, and land use impose on rural and urban constituencies' need for resources and their respective translation into competition for the same tax dollar. And forget North vs. South, the author's thesis rather rests on a theory entitled the "Doctrine of First Effective Settlement," which he quotes at page 16, "Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to effect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been." Through such a colonial-begotten filter does the whole of modern American history drip.

It's an interesting concoction served up from some pretty weak tea leaves. Woodard reads American history like a Rorshach pattern, and while he strives to cherry-pick historical events to support his argument, history remains too messy a blot to cooperate with his chosen arrangement. Counterexamples abound: are these anomalous or do they lead toward a rejection of the national structure Woodard proposes?

So on pages 155-6, he is forced to observe, "One caveat in this account: unlike their American countrymen, neither the Yankee sections of the Maritimes nor the Midlander swaths of Ontario had much say in the development of their political institutions…. Government followed the Tidewater model, only with imperial appointees standing in for the local gentry. Voting rights were extremely limited, and the press was tightly controlled…. The governor -- always a Briton, never a colonial subject -- could dissolve the local legislatures at any time…. It was a system that, in the words of Ontario's first governor, aimed 'ultimately to destroy or to disarm the spirit of democratic subversion.'" Later, he argues that such a spirit in fact stems from the Quebecois. And what of the traditional regional split between rural and urban constituencies indicated on the following page, in which farmers in western Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut petition to join Vermonters in holding off from the proposed federation until they could gain relief from the threat posed by neighboring New Yorker land speculators? It seems to me that the conflict reflects less any monolithic "Yankee" ideology, than classic political factionalism arising from straight-up economic competition.

Woodard's argument requires him to view naturalized founders as aliens to his tribes. On pages 157-9 he paints West Indies reared Alexander Hamilton as an opportunist with an animus for Appalachian folk, citing his determination to honor the war bonds poverty had forced many to sell to speculators only to tax the whiskey those selfsame mountaineers relied upon in lieu of currency. This was a bona fide double-whammy for Appalachian peoples, but not one designed to target them specifically. As Robert Chernow (and Lin-Manuel Miranda) fans understand, Hamilton's fiscal policy was a practical and effective means that used financial mechanics to bind together and establish solvency for a fragile, nascent nation. Woodard's assertion that it reflected a corrupt plot to enrich Hamilton as the expense of Scots-Irish settlers relies on sources debunked by contemporary (and hostile) Congressional investigation.

Again at pages 280-281, Woodard encounters historical confusion with respect to the purported homogeneity and solidarity of his ethnic and cultural blocs' worldviews over a sweep of forty years..

After the 1960s, nortenos were no longer powerless residents of El Norte; from local school boards to representation in the U.S. Senate to the New Mexico governor's mansion, they had begun running the region again…. The culture wars of the 1990s and 2000s were in essence a resumption of the sixties-era struggle, with a majority of people in the four northern nations generally supporting social change and an overwhelming majority of those in the Dixie bloc defending the traditional order. (Opinion in El Norte and the Far West varied, based on the issue at hand.)

Attitudinal inconsistency reigns again at page 292 relative to perceptions of Vietnam. Yankeedom, New Netherland, and the Left Coast youth led protests and delegations who "provided the core of antiwar sentiment in Washington," while "The Midlands neither forcefully challenged nor endorsed the controversial conflict…." And yet he concludes the same paragraph, "One [Midlander from] Baltimore… killed himself by self-immolation outside Secretary of Defense [Yankeedom] Robert McNamara's office in solidarity with Vietnamese monks who'd done the same in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Far Western political representatives [who had a heavy financial stake in the military-industrial complex] generally supported the war… El Norte representatives were stalemated, with even Hispanic congressmen at odds over Cambodia and other war-related issues." Sounds just like a country divided to me, and not one split per se along the "national" lines claimed by the author.

Per Said (at page 327), "contemporary Orientalism teaches us a great deal about the intellectual dishonesty of dissembling [about the tendency toward demonizing or trivializing the 'other'], the result of which is to intensify the divisions and make them both vicious and permanent…. Perhaps if we remember that the study of human experience usually has an ethical, to say nothing of a political consequence in either the best or worst sense, we will not be indifferent to what we do as scholars."

Edward Said's strength lies in his exhortation of humanism over tribalism. No doubt, this is also the source of his popularity. I suppose it's a message we need to hear, no matter how trite and therefore dull. Racism and nationalism are bad, and we are best to remain conscious of their continuously corrosive effects. Got it. No arguments there, I'm all for keeping an open mind.

Quite irrespective of Colin Woodard's boundary drawing, divisions exist among people. Reasonable minds differ, and context is every bit as crucial as culture. We are not all of the same mind. So when it comes to remaining alert for, being skeptical of, and so overcoming my own long-inculcated prejudices, well… easier said than done. I'm not consciously hostile to others, but if you'd please sit a respectable distance from my teapot while we talk I'd feel more comfortable, thanks. Yes, we are all ultimately people. As the joke goes: "I like folk music. It sure beats birdsong." But just you try telling that to Olivier Messiaen.